In which the pond feasts on lithe young bodies, much groaning from Dame Groan, and crocodile tears from the Killer ...

 

 

 

 

Every so often the pond is pleased to be reminded - well, perhaps pleased isn't exactly the right word - that there's a world outside reptile la la land, and so appreciated a correspondent drawing attention to this gag they found somewhere on the intertubes.

Are we still in the "oops" stage, or have we reached the "fuck" moment?

And then there was this tragic story that the pond found at the Daily Beast, (might be paywall affected), talking about Fox News as poison, in much the same way as Sky News is poised to offer daily doses of poison to regional areas.

 It was written by one Preston Padden, who thought Chairman Rupert a jolly fine chap and a gentleman wot wot, and who scribbled about the wonders of building a fine new channel, only to discover that the Chairman really only cared about money and power, and if peddling lies was the way to do it, wot the hell, he had built a big and powerful empire based on lies to pass on to a like-minded lying son.

The piece ended on a note of either low farce or high tragedy, depending on your perspective ...

...Fox News has caused many millions of Americans—most of them Republicans (as my wife and I were for 50 years)—to believe things that simply are not true. For example, Yahoo News reports that 73 percent of Republicans blame “left-wing protesters” for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Of course, that is ludicrous. All one has to do is look at the pictures or videos of the attack to see that the violent mob was comprised of Trump supporters. Similarly, a poll by SSRS in late April found that two-thirds of Republicans either believe or suspect that the election was stolen from Trump—60 percent saying there is “hard evidence” that the election was stolen. As noted above, this ridiculous notion has been thoroughly refuted. But millions of Americans believe these falsehoods because they have been drilled into their minds, night after night, by Fox News.
The greatest irony is that I don’t believe that most of the falsehoods on Fox News reflect Rupert Murdoch’s own views. I believe that he thought that it was important to protect his own health by wearing a mask during the pandemic and he encouraged me to do the same. I believe that he thought that it was important to protect his own health by getting vaccinated at the earliest opportunity and he encouraged me to do the same. And I believe that he thinks that former President Trump is an egomaniac who lost the election by turning off voters, especially suburban women, with his behavior.
Over the past nine months I have tried, with increasing bluntness, to get Rupert to understand the real damage that Fox News is doing to America. I failed, and it was arrogant and naïve to ever have thought that I could succeed. I am at a loss to understand why he will not change course. I can only guess that the destructive editorial policy of Fox News is driven by a deep-seated vein of anti-establishment/ contrarian thinking in Rupert that, at age 90, is not going to change.

Another lost soul who has belatedly seen the light, but keep those lines in mind, because down below the Killer will once again be on the loose ...

I believe that he thought that it was important to protect his own health by wearing a mask during the pandemic and he encouraged me to do the same. I believe that he thought that it was important to protect his own health by getting vaccinated at the earliest opportunity and he encouraged me to do the same.

And so to showing the day's workings, and to an explanation of why Dame Groan once again got the nod ...

 

Vaccine coercion? Sorry, if you happen to work in aged care, or close to patients, you should expect to be vaccinated, just as if you happen to be a patient, you really should be taking care of the medical staff asked to tend to you ...

Your right to freedumb in a librul democracy doesn't trump the right to others staying alive ... but the pond appreciates your attempt to set up a closing cartoon from the infallible Pope.

And fair Dibbs maintaining the war on China, and wondering if Australia will cop the Afghanistan treatment in a crisis? 

The pond has heard enough of all that from the reptiles, enough to last several life times, so it was time to pander to devotees of Dame Groan, groaning away. 

The pond should have known that all the recent extravagant pork barrelling was the fault of extravagant immigration ...

Leaving Dame Groan aside for the moment - she'll be groaning away soon enough - the pond feels compelled to note yet again just how moronic the level of reptile illustrations has become of late. 

The pond doesn't know what level of the Domain carpark was featured in the snap above, but whatever the level, trust the pond, there was no level worth seeing.

Bring back the cult master. Show us a graphic of car parks devouring the city, Godzilla style, or whatever. Just something, anything, better than a stationary row of cars lit up like a row of Xmas fluoro illuminated trees ...

Now on with the groaning ...

 

All this clearly verges on Groanian heresy, savaging the feds for pork barrelling, but the dedicated punter must read on to discover just how it's all the fault of those damned furriners, cluttering up the cities and messing up the Dame's world ...

 

 

And there's a graphic the reptiles could have produced for Dame Groan ... a nightmarish jungle of furriners producing urban congestion ...

Terrifying, but much more exciting than a row of parked cars ... all the more so as it seems these invading, baseball bat-wielding warriors are in a position to enjoy the parking spaces provided at substantial pork-barreling expense by the lavish feds. Groan away at them, Dame Groan ...

 

After all that, luckily there was an immortal Rowe to hand illustrating Dame Groan's key points, with more illustrative Rowe always to hand here ...

 

 

And so to the top of the digital page early this morning to show the rest of the pond's workings ...

 

 

 

Sorry Afganistan, the fix is now firmly in, and the fuck-up on the way to being complete, but how nice of the reptiles to provide a distraction, with taut young bodies glistening and gleaming at the camera ...

Then there were the treacherous states wanting to keep on trading with China, when fair Dibbs, we might be at war with them next week ...

But looming above all this coverage, even that tale of Sydney nurses in isolation, was the return of the Killer, giving the pond no choice ...

 

Before we get started, the pond must once again protest at the illustration, plucked from AFP. The reptiles had the chance to show a graphic of the world's poor suffering because they were made to wear masks, and instead we end up with a random snap of a favela in Brazil?

Look, the pond understands that as a result of cost-cutting the reptiles are now putting together the digital rag using the smell derived from an oily rag, but this means that long gone are the days when the pond could titillate and entice a stray reader with a work by the cult master.

What to do, how to entice the readership into another mask-less wander down Killer lane with the Killer? Of course, why didn't the pond think of it?

 

 

 

Yes, that's much better, and in complete accordance with lizard Oz photographic guidelines, and now on with the Killer shedding crocodile tears for the suffering of the poor...

 

Why is the pond unimpressed by the Killer's crocodile tears?

Over many years the pond has tried, with increasing bluntness, to get Rupert and his Killer minions to understand the real damage that the lizard Oz and his chain of tabloids is doing to Australia. The pond has failed, and it was arrogant and naïve to ever have thought that the pond could succeed. But the pond is not at at a loss to understand why the Chairman will not change course. He's driven by a lust for power and money, even at the age of ninety, when others would be content to give the game away, and so he doesn't mind setting the Killer loose to rage at librul 'leets ... not if it continues to give him power, money and a sway in the political structures of the country ...

Sorry, the pond doesn't have the foggiest where that conspiracy theory came from. Could it have been Media Watch, ranting about the media and vaccines, and yet somehow failing to note that it was Chairman Rupert's media that lathered up hysteria about the AZ vaccine, only to realise that they'd put SloMo in jeopardy, and so lathered up even more hysteria about the hysteria about vaccines?

No wonder the pond is routinely confused by reptile messaging, and now back to the Killer, moaning and whining about lockdowns, because he much prefers an abundance of bodies on the killing fields ...

 

Where was this concerned Killer before the perfidious lockdowns struck, worrying and brooding about the suffering of the world's poor? Come to think of it, where was Chairman Rupert?

 

Ah yes, that's right, a story long lost and forgotten, albeit only a month ago, and yet with a Killer sting in the tail, or the tale, or whatever...

In the past year and a half, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from COVID-19, while millions were thrown out of work. But one of the bleakest periods in American history turned out to be one of the most lucrative for billionaires. They added $1.2 trillion to their fortunes from January 2020 to the end of April of this year, according to Forbes.

And not just in the land of the free ... handsome gains were made all over the place ... and so to a final gobbet from the Killer ... wanting us to believe that News Corp gives a flying fuck about the poor, as opposed to providing a platform for the Killer to parade his deeply disturbed, and deeply disturbing Freudian neuroses ...

 

Is there an upside to all this?

Well yes, apart from the ongoing pleasure of the spectacle of asinine Killer nonsense, the dear lad forgot to rail about the way that masks were ruining the world ... and so we were spared that Killer moment for the nonce ...

And the Killer's rant also happened to chime in with the infallible Pope's thoughts this day, thereby completing the circle, and allowing the pond to retire content, having feasted on taut, lithe young bodies and the odd cartoon or three, and a lot of groaning Dame and Killer whining ...